Obituary

Darius Boman-Behram

When my younger brother, Darius Boman-Behram, who has died aged 59, was born, doctors gave him two weeks to live. He had heart failure, and would have died had our doctor father not given him a homeopathic dose of Mexican snake venom.

I shared a bedroom with Darius for the first 20 years, in our family's house near Regent's Park, central London. Darius was different. He was double jointed, always suffered from chest infections, and holes in his heart meant that whatever he was doing, he had to take it easy. He had Down's syndrome.

When he was about 12, with our father's treatments, Darius's health stabilised, and so our parents got him a tutor. She felt he could have learned to read and write had she seen him at an earlier age.

Darius sat around a lot. For hours he would scrutinise and contemplate my sculptures and paintings when I brought them back from Saint Martins school of art. He participated in our mother Hilde Holger's children's dance classes, and watched her rehearse contemporary dance. Once, when the professional dancers could not perform the right movement, Darius, out of the blue, threw himself into a dramatic twirl and then on to the floor. This was just what she had asked of those professionals!

In 1967 and 1968, as a result of seeing Darius benefit from this activity, Hilde produced two ballets with Down's syndrome boys at Sadler's Wells. Darius danced in Towards the Light.

Music was his first love. The work of the Beatles initiated a euphoric smile. Once, at home when Darius was improvising on the piano, a visiting Viennese pianist and composer asked who the genius was. Darius had impeccable rhythm.

With his death, only now do I understand what he brought to us all. Despite all his suffering, he communicated compassion, love and laughter. He brought people together and invariably made them feel better. And he demonstrated that the unexpected is always possible. After all, his life was a miracle.